Tag: Square Enix

Publisher Square Enix is bringing “Dragon Quest Builders 2,” a variety of “Final Fantasy” remasters, and more to PAX East later this month, it announced on Monday. PAX East takes place Mar. 28-31 at the Boston Convention and Exh…

“Octopath Traveler” is getting a prequel for mobile devices in Japan, a new trailer from Square Enix revealed Thursday. The prequel is coming to iOS and Android devices sometime in 2019, according to the newly created Twitter account for th…

“With any sort of surprising collaborative efforts, I think there’s always some kind of alcohol involved.” It’s the end of a long opening day at the European leg of “Final Fantasy XVI”‘s Fan Fest. If he’s…

Despite the launch of new titles in the “Tomb Raider” and “Just Cause” franchises in 2018, Square Enix experienced declines across the board, according to the publisher’s latest financial results released on Wednesday. &#8…

“Kingdom Hearts III” is now the fastest selling game in the franchise’s history after shipping more than five million copies globally in one week, publisher Square Enix announced on Monday. That figure includes both physical and digit…

The SouljaGame has met its quick and inevitable end. Rapper DeAndre Cortez Way, aka Soulja Boy, pulled his new line of emulator consoles from his website less than a month after he began selling them. Links to their product pages on SouljaWatch.com now…

The new “Kingdom Hearts III” trailer went live Monday morning, a day earlier than expected, delivering more than three and a half minutes of cut-scenes, gameplay and faux music video to fans of the Disney-meets-Square mash-up game. The fina…

“Just Cause 4” is meant to be taken in at 50,000 feet. The fourth iteration of the zany, explosion-happy sandbox series looks and feels very appealing when you’re soaring over the jungle, blowing up wave after waves of enemy troops from a helicopter. W…

Three out of four upcoming installments to “Final Fantasy XV” DLC were canceled, Square Enix announced Wednesday during a special livestream broadcast. The announcement comes on the heels of game director Hajima Tabata’s departure fro…

Square Enix announced that the company has become a 20 percent shareholder in indie game developer Bulkhead Interactive. Bulkhead Interactive is the same developer behind games like “The Turing Test” and “Battalion 1944.” The te…

A complete compilation of all of the “Kingdom Hearts” games is coming to PlayStation 4, Square Enix announced Friday. For $39.99, fans and newcomers can catch up on the entire series in time for the release of “Kingdom Hearts III&#822…

“Kingdom Hearts III” will feature a selection of familiar Disney celebrities reprising their roles as some of their most popular characters. Square Enix released a confirmed list of the “star-studded” voice cast fans can look fo…

In “Just Cause 4,” Rico Rodriguez once again takes on the machinations of paramilitary group the Black Hand, but this time his main antagonist is towering leader Gabriela Morales. Morales, seen today in a new “Just Cause 4” trailer from Avalanche, is a…

Developer Deck Nine is working on a new, unannounced project for publisher Square Enix, it announced on Thursday. The two companies recently worked together on the episodic adventure game “Life is Strange: Before the Storm.” Lee Singleton, …

When you’re playing “Shadow of the Tomb Raider” — the new game that was released on Sept. 14 — or its predecessor “Rise” and the 2013 reboot, some of the wildest moments come not during big story moments or even when you manage to pull off some wild move or kill all the bad guys during a hectic firefight. No, some of the most memorable bits come instead when you fail and are shown Lara Croft dying in some brutal way.

There’s a number of different types of these horrifying death scenes, though probably the most common involves Lara getting impaled on something — spikes, pointy tree branches, things like that. (Here’s a video montage from the first of these games if you’re unfamiliar with what I’m talking about.) Other notable pre-scripted death scenes in “Shadow of the Tomb Raider” involve Lara getting mauled by a jaguar, and getting swarmed by dozens of venomous snakes.

These sequences have been much discussed since they were introduced in the rebooted franchise in 2013’s “Tomb Raider,” which also serves as the primary source for the Alicia Vikander-starring film reboot that came out earlier this year. We spoke with Camilla Luddington, the “Grey’s Anatomy” star who has played the video game version of Lara Croft in each of the past three “Tomb Raider” games, about how she actually performs those death sequences and the infamous screams that go with them.

“Well, I don’t necessarily do motion capture for all those death scenes, thank god. I think the game might never be made because it was take forever,” Luddington told TheWrap when asked what all goes into those scenes on her part, and whether she does have to physically perform them.

In addition to her vocal performance, Luddington does motion capture for the games — with many scenes being physically performed in much the same way as in film and television.

“But I do end up doing them in a [voice-over] booth. And it’s a very bizarre experience to be mauled by a jaguar and have to make that sound,” Luddington said, leaving a long pause between “that” and “sound.” “But yeah, the answer to that is I do and I don’t. I don’t mocap it, but I obviously have to vocalize that.”

I asked how the game developers direct her with those scenes and whether, for example, she had to do a specific set of vocalizations for being bitten by a ton of snakes at the same time.

“Yes, to an extent, but there’s usually a lot more description that goes into it, and sometimes I’m even able to see the scene itself without any audio yet, so I get a visual of it too,” Luddington said.

“I don’t think that there’s necessarily a collective library that’s specifically like that. There is definitely obviously for, like, grunts or climbing and things like that,” She said, before describing how they do certainly set up recordings for some of the bigger moments that can result in Lara’s death. The snake pit, for example, is just a random trap that she can fall in. But her fight with the jaguars is actually a key narrative moment early on in the game.

“Usually they do the best they can by trying to set up the scene specifically for me and let me know what the moment before is and what she’s experienced, and they sort of guide me through and direct me through in a VO booth,” Luddington said. “So it’s not just like ‘Hey, can you make this sound really quick.’”

So if you’ve been playing “Shadow of the Tomb Raider” and had Lara Croft’s haunting death screams stuck in your head, well, now you know how that particular bit of upsetting sausage is made.

Square Enix’s massively multiplayer role-playing game “Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn” turns five in September and it’s celebrating with a new milestone — more than 14 million registered players (including free trial ac…

Square Enix plans to create a strategic alliance with Chinese tech giant Tencent, the video game publisher announced on Thursday. Both have signed a letter of intent and will now establish a joint-venture company. They will also co-develop AAA titles b…

Avalanche Studios’ “Just Cause 4” just introduced a gameplay trailer awash with footage of protagonist Rico Rodriguez squaring off against a damaging tornado. As it turns out, there was a slew of other information in the same clip, as…

Human Head Studios on Thursday shared more details about its elusive new title, “The Quiet Man”, including a brand-new gameplay trailer. In a post on the official PlayStation Blog, Square Enix producer Kensei Fujinaga confirmed the new game…

The Nintendo Switch port of the DS cult classic “The World Ends with You” is bringing its unique blend of rhythmic battles and adventure to the console on Oct. 12 as both digital and physical editions, Nintendo announced Tuesday morning. &#…